SAGA PANTHER (REPERMINT)

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. Hopefully you all have a loved one to spend it with. If you don’t, feel free to occupy your time reading toy reviews here at mike’s collection. Today I’ve got a Valentine’s Day themed action figure just for you. Well it’s not exactly Valentine’s Day themed but its got hearts on it so close enough. This here is the panther from the Beast Saga DX Starter Set. This is the set that I bought myself for Christmas which also included the previously reviewed Saga Whale and Saga Killer. It also included an owl, a parrot and a wolf. When it came time to decide which figure to review today I actually grabbed the wolf and sat down to write about him. But just before I got started I remembered what day it was and realized that I had a much more appropriate figure to review, and it just so happened to come from the same box set. Before I go on let me just say that I did not forget about Valentine’s Day, I just forgot about it in regards to reviewing action figures. Me and Vanessa had a lovely evening out for dinner and then checking out the new DIE HARD movie. And before you jump to the conclusion that I dragged her to some over-the-top action movie on Valentine’s Day I’ll have you know that it was her selection. She’s recently developed a crush on actor Jai Courtney who plays Willis’s son in the flick. Movie was “meh” by the way.

But back to the matter at hand, let’s review this action figure. I can sum it up in two quick words. It sucks. This figure is a major misstep for the Beast Saga designers and I hope it isn’t a sign of things to come. The Battle Beast figures of the 80s all had relatively simple armor. Simple but cool. I like that these newer figures have more detailed armor which often times has nods to the species, like hamster wheels on the Hamster’s armor. But gags like that run the risk of being cheesy. The Whale from this set had surfboard shoulder pads and a whale tail shaped weapon, those were borderline cheesy but still pretty cool. When it comes to Saga Panther the designers showed no restraint in their cheesiness.

I’m gonna make an assumption here and presume that this Panther figure is supposed to be a girl. I’m sure my assumptions will be validated once the cartoon series gets going and a female is cast to voice this character. Now I understand that it could be hard to show that a character is female in a line like this. When it comes to animals, those of us who aren’t experts, often times can’t determine the sex of a creature unless we examine their junk. I have a pet guinea pig, Winkerton, whom I have owned for 3 years and I’ll be honest, I’m still not certain if she’s actually a she. I bought her as a baby and even the people at the pet store were unable to tell me what she was. I was told that it’s nearly impossible to tell the sex of a guinea pig when they’re that young. But apparently when they’re older you can tell by pressing firmly on their nether regions to see if anything emerges. Now while I would like to know the gender of my pet I’ve never been curious enough to start poking around down there to see if Winky is hiding a winky. So that being the case, how could I go about letting people know that my guinea pig is a girl? By dressing her up in pink hearts and high heels apparently.

Again, I realize you can’t give a panther pouty red lips, long blonde hair or giant boob but there had to have been a better way to identify her gender than this. Frankly, this is just plain insulting. Saga Panther has multiple pink hearts on her purple armor, she’s got a Cleopatra style headdress, and armored high-heel boots. It looks dumb. Even if I could get past the boots, I have no idea why anyone would want pink hearts all over their battle armor. She even has a heart shaped shield. And believe it or not, she does have sculpted boobs. I don’t even want to guess at what that thing sculpted on her loin cloth is supposed to be. I look at this figure and can do nothing but shake my head. I don’t even like the panther face sculpt. This is an all out fail.

I’m all for the Beast Saga line having some female characters but not if they’re gonna be ridiculous stereotypes. This figure is definitely the weak link of the DX starter set and of the whole series thus far. I probably would have bought her even if she was a single carded figure because I’m a completest like that but there’s no way I would recommend purchasing her to anyone. As it is though she’s included in a 6 pack with a bunch of other great figures so any Beast Saga fan should add her to their collection by way of the box set. 2 out of 10.

Even though i’m not a big fan of this toy i feel that this character would get a prominent role in my universe. Mainly because she’s the only girl. (I’m not sold on Falcon’s gender yet). When I was a kid I designated one battle beast as a girl though I’m not sure why, the Sabertooth tiger. She had a flirtatious relationship with Sly Fox and was a “main” character.